Review Roundup: Joan Didion's THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING Starring Kathleen Chalfant

Keen Company presents a site-specific production of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, opening tonight! Read the reviews!

Starring Obie and Drama Desk Award winner Kathleen Chalfant in a one-woman tour de force performance, this must-see revival, runs through October 19-November 20 with an opening set for November 2, will be intimately staged across New York City. Community spaces include South Oxford Space in Brooklyn, Bronx Documentary Center, ID Studio Theater in the Bronx, Goddard Riverside in Manhattan, and The Church-in-the-Gardens in Queens. Tickets are currently on sale at www.keencompany.org.

Adapted from her best-selling memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking recounts Joan Didion's journey of loss, perseverance, and ultimately hope, using her signature wit to draw an intimate portrait of the resilience of the human heart. As conceived and directed by Keen's Artistic Director Jonathan Silverstein, this unique theatrical event will be brought directly to the people, staged in non-traditional theater spaces including living rooms, libraries, and other community spaces throughout New York City.

This Keen Company presentation is the first time Didion's play has been seen in New York since its premiere on Broadway at the Booth Theatre in 2007.

The creative team for The Year of Magical Thinking includes Jennifer Paar (costume design), Anshuman Bhatia (lighting design), Corinne Woods (line producer), and Arthur Atkinson (stage manager).

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Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times: The scale of it [the original Broadway production] was all out of whack - not the script, which Didion imbued with a soul-baring directness, but the production. The memoir's starkly personal story, so intimate as a reading experience, was told now before a crowd of hundreds. We, the audience, were asked to accept one famous artist - the sturdy, statuesque Redgrave - as the stand-in for a highly recognizable other, the diminutive Didion, who was in her early 70s then, with a fragility about her. It was all too large. It did not capture the essence of the book. How thrilling, then, that the first New York revival of "The Year of Magical Thinking" does. Directed by Jonathan Silverstein, this Keen Company production goes small, and in doing so, gets the play sublimely right.

Amanda Marie Miller, Theatrely: Kathleen Chalfant is absolutely remarkable in her nuance, stamina, and ability to create an entire world while sitting in an armchair. She is at home in this text. While it may not be her home, nor is it mine, we've all found our way here. For a random living room and an assortment of strangers, this production and its atmosphere are near-holy. After an hour and a half of storytelling, Chalfant exits the living room as quietly as she arrived. The tension has not shifted and, if anything, the room has become too vulnerable for the normal post-show buzz. I think through the etiquette, my mind racing with metaphors and meanings...should I talk to my neighbor who held back tears? Should I introduce myself to the listener across the room that made eye contact, nodding in a poignant moment? I decide to leave in silence, taken aback by the connections made without words. This experience was everything and more.

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